


illness and remorse

by onetrueobligation



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Borodinskaya bitva | Battle of Borodino, Gore, Its not that graphic but I thought I should tag it just in case, M/M, also i wrote the second half in a hurry so please forgive me if it seems rushed, i almost made myself cry writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 06:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13242159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetrueobligation/pseuds/onetrueobligation
Summary: It took two deaths for Dolokhov and Pierre to realise perhaps they share something in common after all.





	illness and remorse

**Author's Note:**

> So! I came up with this idea while watching the 1972 version of War and Peace (it was really good!). Keep in mind that I had to change up the order of some of the events (e.g. Pierre and Dolokhov forgiving each other). I plan to edit this later as there's probably a couple of typos and I wrote the second half in a hurry. All the same, I hope you enjoy!

Fyodor Dolokhov was brutally aware of what came from developing attachments to others. He’d seen it too many times – men clutching their dead or dying comrades to their chest, sobbing like children, suffering the painful consequences of friendship in times of war.

Dolokhov would scoff at these displays of morbid affection, convince himself of his own superiority and commend himself on his wise decision to never attach himself to another. It was this air of deliberate solitude that seemed to make him so intimidating, not his status, not his heartlessness, but his coldness, reflected so often in those insolent, crystalline eyes of his that said _you don’t know me and I do not wish to know you._

Of course, even his resolve cracked sometimes. Some days, when he saw the bonds that soldiers formed in times of trouble, the almost pathetic slivers of hope in their eyes as they found some sort of solitude in one another, Dolokhov wondered whether he was wrong. Wondered if perhaps there was something to be said for this strange human emotion between love and admiration, this strange bond known as _friendship._

And then he’d see some young man with his legs blown off in the arms of another weeping soldier, and he’d sniff with that air of superiority he so often donned and turn away and remind himself _human attachment is a mistake._

A mistake he had made only once.

 

Pierre Bezukhov could not have been more different. Pierre believed in all sorts of love – love for women, love for the earth, love for God, love for mankind. He relished in sharing his love with the world, and the sense of fulfillment that came with it. But it was with Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky that he felt the need to share this love with the most. His warm but stern friend seemed always prepared to listen to Pierre, and Pierre adored and admired the wisdom of the older man; there was no one else he would have preferred to debate with, or to agree with.

And to him, Andrei seemed almost a challenge. His habit of distancing himself from the rest of the world made Pierre only more determined to become the person Andrei confided in the most.

And then, there was war. Pierre had never become involved with it, but Andrei seemed desperate to escape from his mundane life in Petersburg for reasons Pierre could not understand. And no matter what happened at home, Andrei always found himself returning to the battlefield, which Pierre found inexplicably upsetting. Without Andrei, Pierre felt in himself that he was nothing, and that was perhaps what upset him the most. Pierre needed Andrei, but Andrei didn’t need Pierre. It seemed Andrei didn’t even _want_ Pierre.

The look on Andrei’s face when Pierre arrived at Borodino confirmed this fact.

 

Fyodor vaguely remembered vowing to himself to never grow attached, never let himself fall into that trap of human affection, but everything he’d ever believed in seemed to be crumbling to bits as he rushed into the hospital, his heart racing and a sickening dread growing in his stomach. The stench hit him like a wave and he almost gagged – the indescribable, acrid odour seeping through his nostrils and hitting the back of his throat. God, the place _smelled_ of human misery. Something Dolokhov had thought he was immune to. But racing past rows of men in agony, covered in their own blood and God-knew-what, his eyes watering with one hand over his mouth and nose, it suddenly seemed that he’d become the fool that he’d laughed at scornfully, the man bound to other men through some friendship that Dolokhov had thought he would never experience.

Yes, he was the fool now. He’d let himself succumb to emotional attachment, and where had it gotten him? In this wretched, awful place where the almost painful beating of his own heart couldn’t quite drown out the tormented moans and screams of the dying men around him. And he was worse. Because he hadn’t just let himself become attached to a man. He’d fallen in love with one like the imbecile he was.

And then, when he came to what he was looking for, he really felt the vomit rise in his throat.

The once-handsome man, slightly separated from the rest for his status, was lying on his back, shaking slightly, the blood drained from his face entirely, and – _oh, God_ – a horrifically blank space where his right leg should have been. It wasn’t so much the injury that disturbed Dolokhov the most, nor seeing what had once been such a brilliant figure now faded and clutching onto the last threads of life.

No, it was the expression on his face.

Because, damn him, the bastard was smiling.

Eyes half-open, he was practically _grinning_ at his friend, and it was only that grin that served to remind Dolokhov that the broken man before him was the same charming Prince Anatole Kuragin that had ensnared him in some kind of enchantment nine years before in Petersburg, the city that now seemed a million miles away. Dolokhov choked on something and turned his eyes away, unable to bear the way Anatole was looking at him with that cryptic, incomprehensible smile.

‘Am I really so hideous now?’ Anatole murmured, and he may as well have killed Dolokhov then and there for the effect his words had.

Dolokhov closed his eyes tightly and shook his head, still scrambling desperately to find something, anything, to say. ‘Of course not,’ he lied, turning his head on its side and gritting his teeth as though the words caused him physical pain. In truth, Anatole was repulsive and they both knew it. He didn’t look any worse than any other man in the hospital, but it was the fact that he’d once been so _beautiful,_ so handsome and god-like, and now it was as though a brilliant artwork had been barbarically vandalised.

Anatole’s smile faltered slightly. ‘Ah, Fedya, look at me. I deserve that, at least.’

He was absolutely right, of course. With immense effort, Dolokhov turned his sharp eyes to meet Anatole’s uncharacteristically dull ones.

Anatole seemed to be satisfied with that. ‘You see what they did to me?’ He gestured vaguely at his leg – or rather, the space where the leg should have been. ‘Count yourself lucky you weren’t here while they were hacking it away. I mean, you’ve always known I’m a screamer, but--’

‘For God’s sake, Anatole!’ Dolokhov found his hands clenched into fists. ‘How— how can you joke about this?!’ He would have preferred Anatole to weep, to whimper, to cry out like the rest of the men in the tent. But he just continued to wear that grotesque smile.

‘What else would you have me do? I’m a dying man, Fedya.’ The slight crack in his feeble voice on the word _dying_ was the only sign he was unsettled by this idea at all.

‘Don’t say that,’ Dolokhov whispered, his words sounding as empty and hollow as he felt. ‘You’ll see – doctors have all sort of medicines nowadays… you’ve no idea what they can do…’

Anatole had the audacity to laugh at that. ‘You always sound so funny when you lie.’ His words were accusatory but his tone was as light as ever. He pressed his white lips together for a moment, his smile fading. ‘If you’d just stop lying about these things to yourself, you’d end up making the most of them.’

‘What--’

‘Just—just stay here a while, Fedya. It’s a comfort to see your face. I couldn’t have picked a more handsome one to be the last I see.’

‘Will you _stop_ talking like that, you stupid boy?’ Dolokhov supposed he should have been kinder to a man in Anatole’s condition, but the prince was certainly making it difficult.

Anatole chuckled a little but fell silent. Fedya knelt down and clutched Anatole’s hand between his own.

‘It’s what everyone expects, of course,’ Anatole said softly, rambling as he always did when he was nervous. ‘And honestly, I’d be doing everyone back home such a favour by giving up the ghost, wouldn’t I?’

‘Shut up,’ Dolokhov said quietly.

‘Today could easily be my last day on this Earth and I’ll talk as much as I very well please,’ Anatole retorted, and for a moment he very much resembled his old self. ‘Besides, I thought you liked the sound of my voice? You always used to say so.’

Dolokhov pressed his lips to Anatole’s hand, eyes once again tightly shut. ‘Not… not like this.’

‘Well, are you going to kiss me properly or do I have to die knowing my Fedya was too repulsed to even look at my face?’ Anatole’s eyes danced with their old fire for just a moment, and he looked like the boy Fedya had fallen for all those years ago. ‘Come, now, I swear I don’t smell as bad as that lot over there. The doctors did their best to clean me up.’

Dolokhov hesitated, and Anatole’s face fell. _Fuck it,_ Dolokhov thought, and rose to kiss Anatole’s pallid lips. _Fuck him. Fuck this war._

It wasn’t as though this was an uncommon display of affection, least of all between a dying man and his friend, but to Anatole and Fedya it held a type of meaning that separated them from the rest. Something that let them pretend none of this was real.

 

Pierre had seen Andrei, seen the explosion, and pieced together that the man had been carried off to the hospital. Pierre could only pray this was true. Since he wasn’t actually enlisted, it was easy to slip away from the chaos that he’d once been enraptured by but now seemed frightful and irrelevant compared to what could have been happening to his friend at that very moment.

His glasses lost, his face and clothes covered in dust and ashes, and his ears still ringing from the explosions of the battlefield, he stumbled as he made his way toward where he’d been told the makeshift hospital was. His brow was slick with sweat, solely from the terror that something awful could happen to his friend.

He’d rushed to the battlefield because he’d wanted to observe the war first-hand, to see just once what it was that Andrei found so enticing about the action. And he had certainly seen it. That feeling of excitement and anticipation that drowned the fear, with bullets flying left and right, cannons firing and the sounds of war all around, that feeling which made his blood rush through his veins – that was undoubtedly what Andrei saw in this war. Because observing all the chaos, Pierre found he simply could not be afraid. He felt untouchable, as though he were watching through a sheet of impenetrable glass, as though he were hovering just a fraction out of reality.

And then, seeing Andrei fall – that was all it had taken to drag him right back to where he was standing.

As Pierre made his way toward the hospital, it occurred to him that perhaps he was so afraid because Andrei was something that should not, could not, be taken away from this world. He was so intelligent, so wise, so silent and yet knew so much, that it seemed simply impossible that something as _human_ as a grenade could take down something so unearthly as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.

Encasing that dizzying intellect, Pierre supposed, was a very human, very breakable body of flesh and bones. It seemed so hard to believe.

When he arrived, he told a man – a doctor? – standing before the tent the name of the man he was searching for, his words almost unintelligible.

_Please—_

_He’s my friend—_

_I have to see him—_

The doctor, his words only half-heard by Pierre, explained that the man in question had been taken inside some twenty-five minutes earlier with a grenade wound to the abdomen, had had his thighbone removed, and had been unconscious for the entire process.

Pierre’s mind seemed to fall silent and buzz with noise at the same time. Panic tore through his veins as he shoved easily past the few men who tried to stop him and made his way into the tent.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he found inside.

Pierre had always spoken of love, that love was the key to happiness, that God’s love would save all things. But here, in these hellish surroundings, he found it difficult to believe in love, happiness, or God. Men, screaming, moaning, sobbing, begging for help, for their pain to stop – Pierre couldn’t hold back a horrified sob. On the battlefield, war was glorious. But away from the guns and the cannons, there was something so much darker, something so much more _real._ Pierre’s blood boiled as he thought of Buonaparte, of how all of this sickness and death was _his_ fault, of how these men were suffering because of the French emperor. War had lost its appeal altogether, and Pierre’s anger was only fuelled when he pieced together the fact that somewhere in this sea of bodies was Andrei.

 _Andrei._ He had to find Andrei.

He raced through the aisles, searching desperately for Andrei’s face, wondering if Andrei’s face would even be recognisable, wondering if Andrei would recognise _him,_ wondering if Andrei would survive this –

And then he saw him.

So serene compared to all those around him, his eyelids gently closed and his mouth in a thin line that was almost a peaceful smile. Pierre’s heart swelled with both grief and the same love he had always felt for the man. A love that seemed only to grow.

Pierre froze in place for a moment before scurrying to Andrei’s side like a devoted servant, looking down at his pale face with a mix of adoration and pity. ‘Oh, Andrei,’ he murmured, stroking away a strand of dark hair from the man’s face with tender care.

For some strange reason, it was only then that he noticed the bloodied bandaged around Andrei’s left leg and visibly recoiled. Pierre was no expert, but _that_ – that did not resemble anything Pierre expected a man to recover from.

As if suddenly becoming aware of Pierre’s presence, Andrei’s eyelids fluttered open and his eyes flickered across Pierre’s face for a moment before recognition passed over his face. ‘Pierre, you half-wit, what do you think you’re doing here?’ he said weakly.

‘F-Forgive me, I…’ Pierre swallowed, a painful lump building in his throat. ‘I saw you. When you… when you were struck down. I had to come see you.’

Andrei laughed feebly, and it was the saddest thing Pierre had ever heard in his life. ‘You old fool. First you arrive on the battlefield of your own accord, and then you run off again? Thank God you never properly enlisted.’

Pierre forced a small smile. ‘I had to come see you,’ he repeated, as though Andrei simply didn’t understand. ‘Did they… did they tell you what happened to you?’

‘Oh, they explained it well enough,’ Andrei dismissed with a wave of his hand. ‘They took my thighbone. I suppose it could be worse. And, you know, they say there’s a good chance I’ll pull through, too.’

This time, Pierre’s face broke into a genuine smile. ‘Oh, Andrei, I’m so glad… I thought… I thought that…’

‘That I’d die?’ He chuckled softly. ‘One day. But I believe I owe you this, for now, at least. Survival.’ He burst into an unanticipated paroxysm of hacks and Pierre hurried to help him in any way he could, but Andrei brushed him away.

Pierre stood watching as a tiny trail of blood spilled from Andrei’s mouth. As though ashamed, the prince wiped it away quickly and avoided Pierre’s scandalised look, instead letting his eyes drift to the bed across the aisle, behind Pierre. Pierre hesitated a moment before turning around to follow his gaze.

‘Look at him,’ Andrei said softly. ‘I find I haven’t the heart to be vengeful any longer. Perhaps I’m losing my touch. But I fear he won’t have the same luck as I.’

Pierre watched the almost unrecognisable figure of Anatole Kuragin lying there, looking as pale and distant as a ghost, with a stump for a right leg. Despite his condition, he was talking good-naturedly with his long-time companion, Fyodor Dolokhov, at the sight of whom Pierre flushed a deep shade of red. There was something truly unsettling about seeing his brother in law in such a state that Pierre had to turn away.

‘It’s my fault he’s here,’ Andrei continued with a remorseful air. ‘I was the one who followed him to Petersburg to challenge him. I was the one who forced him into this last resort. I was so foolish, then. But now I understand. You were right all along, Pierre. I love that man with all my heart, as I love you and all men on this earth. I find that, in this grim place, I have never felt more loving in my life.’

Pierre shook his head, not understanding. ‘I don’t see how you could possibly see love in this place. I see only sickness and death.’

‘Then look closer.’ With seemingly a great effort, Andrei lifted his arm and pointed over to Anatole and Dolokhov, who, to Pierre’s surprise, now had their lips locked together in an awkwardly-positioned kiss. Something about seeing that kiss brought hot tears to the corners of Pierre’s eyes and he could not say why.

‘All around, it’s the same,’ Andrei continued gently. ‘All these men, these dying men with nothing left in their lives, all of them have found something in one another, something safe, something human and comforting. Underneath this layer of blood and grime, there’s something so pure it cannot be seen, something that unifies every one of us. You were right, Pierre,’ and he laughed, genuinely, joyfully. ‘You were right all along.’

Pierre stared around at the patients in their beds, but all he saw was the same suffering he had witnessed when he’d walked inside. He shook his head again. ‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Then come here, and I’ll show you.’ Pierre uncertainly stepped toward Andrei, who gestured for him to move closer still. When he was within reach, he took a hold of Pierre’s shirt and pulled him forward, bringing their lips together in much the same was as Anatole and Dolokhov’s had been. Pierre gasped in surprise meekly before surrendering to Andrei and allowing himself to feel what it was that Andrei felt, this strange love for everything. And he really did. His heart stuttered in his chest as he leaned into Andrei’s kiss, still in awe of this great man and at the impossibility that, yes, it was true – Andrei _did_ want him. Andrei _did_ need him.

 

Across the aisle, Anatole gave a slight smirk at the sight of the two men together. ‘Would you look who it is?’ he remarked to Dolokhov by his side. ‘I’m sure if they weren’t already preoccupied, they’d kill me before this damned leg ever could.’

Dolokhov snorted. It was almost nice to hear Anatole joking around like his old jaunty self, choosing deliberately not to think of what the future held – or rather _didn’t_ hold – for him.

Pierre and Andrei broke apart, with Pierre understandably flustered and Andrei looking tired but happy. He and Anatole locked eyes for a second, and Anatole’s eyes widened. He’d feared the man, but now all he feared was his own imminent end. Instead, his glance simply asked for forgiveness, and with an inclination of the head, Andrei gave it before turning his attention back to his companion.

Anatole let out a shuddering gasp and Dolokhov immediately sat up straighter, his brief smile gone entirely. ‘Tolya?’

Anatole scrunched his eyes up in pain and squeezed Dolokhov’s hand tightly, his body tensing. ‘F… Fedya… Helene…’

‘Yes?’

‘You have to tell her… tell her I’m sorry. She didn’t want me to go…’ He spoke in a voice now no more than a shaky whisper. ‘She knew… Oh, God, Fedya, she told me this would happen…’ For the first time, his eyes welled with tears. ‘You’ve got to tell her to forgive me… I never… I never wanted this…’

Dolokhov pressed his lips to Anatole’s temple. ‘Shh…’ he soothed. ‘You’ll… you’ll feel better soon.’

‘You’d better not forget how much I care for you, you bastard,’ Anatole breathed. ‘If you ever, for even a moment, forget that I love you, I’ll come back from the grave and haunt you for the rest of your days.’

An unfamiliar _something_ slid from Dolokhov’s eye and down his cheek. ‘Oh, you idiot, what have you gotten yourself into?’ he murmured, and while Anatole tried to respond, Dolokhov knew the question had been directed at himself more than anyone else.

 

‘I owe you an apology.’

Pierre could find no reason to hate Dolokhov, or at least could not find it within himself to hate him. His wife long dead, the duel years in the past, Dolokhov seemed to him the friend that he had been back in their youth in Petersburg.

‘I don’t understand. You’ve done nothing wrong.’

Dolokhov shook his head. ‘Please allow me to ask for your forgiveness.’

Pierre, who had felt numb ever since Andrei’s passing, simply stared at him. ‘Dolokhov… I shot you in the arm. I really… I really don’t believe _you_ are in the wrong.’

Fyodor laughed. ‘Well, then. Can we agree to forgive one another?’

Pierre paused before smiling in his usual bewildered way and embracing the man before him. ‘Of course, my dear fellow. Of course.’

They were standing in Pierre’s courtyard. Pierre had held a small and simple gathering in memory of his closest friend, the late Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. Few guests had arrived – Princess Mary Bolkonskaya, the Rostov children, Vaska Denisov, and a few others whom Pierre didn’t know but Andrei surely had. But most surprising of all was Dolokhov, who had hardly said a word to anyone during the service, but had lingered after the others had left.

Fyodor pulled back and looked at Pierre for a moment. It was such a lovely day that the grim events that had shaken them both could have been half-forgotten dreams for how unsuited they were to the scenery. But their hearts were still heavy with the losses they’d suffered.

Pierre cast his eyes across the courtyard, as though searching for something that Dolokhov could not see. Or some _one._

‘You loved him,’ Dolokhov remarked simply.

‘In the hospital, he told me to love all men.’

‘I didn’t mean that at all.’

Pierre stared at him.

‘You _loved_ him. You adored him. You idolised him. In ways you couldn’t explain.’

Pierre bit his lip. ‘I don’t understand how you could know--’

‘Because Anatole and I share— _shared_ something of the same bond.’

Pierre blinked innocently behind his spectacles. ‘Oh,’ he said simply, as a slight breeze ruffled his hair. ‘I… I really ought to have seen that.’

Dolokhov nudged Pierre and folded his arms across his chest. ‘And I suppose this must be our punishment.’ His cast his eyes across the scenery and a sad smile crossed his face. ‘Your Bolkonsky said love is the greatest feeling a man can experience?’

Pierre nodded.

‘But if this is love, why are we hurting, eh?’

Pierre closed his eyes, almost trying to drown him out, and said nothing.

From Andrei’s death, Pierre had taken away their agreed conclusion – love would overcome all things.

From Anatole’s death, Dolokhov had simply learned to never attach himself to another person again.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments give me life and pathetically needed validation! xx


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